I recognize that this is a very combustible issue. I have neither the desire, resources, political passion, nor the time to delve into that discussion. I usually steer quite clear of the politics in general, except when it comes to the issue of abortion. In my mind this is a "trump card" issue. The horror of abortion is unspeakably dark and will rot our society now and into the future until it comes to an end. Come Lord Jesus.
All this to say, as I was reading the comments that accompanied this blog post I simply wanted to hear from people about how they handle the abortion issue if they say that they are Democrat and Christian.
So I wrote:
For all those who are Christians and Democrats... Just curious, how do you feel about the abortion issue?One response:
Amazingly enough it is possible to be pro-choice and Christian at the same time. I've done so for years and have not yet spontaneously combusted. For real though? Have you read this blog at all?Another response:
I feel there are many issues as important as (or more important than) abortion. Many of these also deal with the sanctity of life. (I don't identify myself as a Democrat, but I am a Christian and have voted mostly Democrat over the last 10 years.)One more:
What it boils down to for me is that the Democratic party seems much more inclined to help young mothers once they have their babies. Many Republican politicians seem to want to push young mothers into having their babies and then make them feel guilty for being young, unwed mothers by withholding any help for them. On the whole, I feel the Democrats do much more to support life in the U.S. than the Republicans.
I am a Christian and a Democrat. I am pro life and pro choice just like Jesus Christ. It is your choice to have an abortion or not have an abortion and it is also you who must live with the sin. Jesus allows us to make our own decisions whether they be right or wrong so who am I to force someone not to make a bad choice. You can live an example of Christ and tell others about the Lord but ultimately it is up to others how they choose to live that life.
The first two comments are a bit easier to interact with. The third seems a bit odd to say the least. But in reference to the first two comments. Here is what I wrote:
I am pro-choice as well. I am all about women having choices about any number of things. Who to marry, what job to take, what to eat for breakfast, etc. But I would assume that for most of us we would agree that some choices are not good choices and should be restricted by the law. Wouldn't we all agree on that? We should restrict those who want to get drunk and drive a car. We should outlaw the ability to abuse our kids. We should create structures in our society to guard against the oppression of the weak, poor, and marginalized.
So for those who are pro-choice (Christian or not) I think we must ask the question of what is the unborn? If you think it should be a legal right for a women to take the life of the human that lives in her uterus, why do you believe that? What separates the unborn from the born? Is it size, level of development, their location, of degree of dependency?
No one would support the right to kill a toddler or a two week old baby. So for those of us who would say that we are Christian and pro-choice would you ever say that you were pro-choice about a mom having the right to kill her two week old? Obviously, no one in their right mind would say that we should be pro-choice about that. This would clearly be a non-Christian choice right? We can't be Christian and pro-choice about killing two week old babies, right? Of course.
Since we all agree on that, it seems that we are then obligated to demonstrate the essential difference between an unborn baby and a born baby such that the born baby has a fundamental right to life and protection by law and the other does not. What is the essential difference that makes us feel as though we should protect the right to terminate in the case of the born human but not in the case of the unborn human person. Seems as though we have to assume that the unborn is not human or not a person. Do you assume that? Help me out on that one. If so, why? Thanks!
12 comments:
Zach,
The second commenter was the most perplexing to me. The comment that democrats do more for young mothers may not be an argument that holds water. There was a 2008 article in Real Clear Politics that demonstrated that Republicans are significantly more generous with time and money than democrats. I am not sure that matters though. Your final summary really hits on the more important issues, I think.
Great response. Would you give us a link to the blog so we can see how this plays out. I'd like to see how they respond to your follow up.
I'd rather not post the link. But if you google it you'd probably find it.
Zach,
I am sure you are already aware of it, but almost anything they reply with, will be refuted with a correlation to the elderly or disabled, which again is unthinkable just like a toddler or two week old baby in your reply. Sadly, most Christians are not taught to think critically about issues and worldview. This leads to all kinds of inconsistency. Thanks for the post!
Donald Miller had some interesting thoughts back in 2008:
I realize this is controversial, that there are many who would rather vote for a pro-life candidate and keep the abortion rate the same, on principle. And like them I believe in the sanctity of life, I simply think we need to begin making progress, and Barack is offering progress. He is also standing up to his own party on the issue and moving the party forward to elevate the issue of the sanctity of life within the Democratic Party. I also see this as progress. I do wish we could end abortion completely, but the Republicans have not spelled out a realistic plan to do so, and until they do, I won't vote for a candidate who simply throws us a pro-life line and no plan. It seems insincere.
But let me add this: I do wish Obama were pro-life. His plan to reduce the rate of abortion is a great step for the party, but I also wish he would defend the unborn to a greater degree.
If McCain cared about the issue of abortion enough, he would move forward on the issue. He might draft a constitutional amendment that would make abortion specifically unconstitutional, the way George W. Bush talked of doing with gay marriage. George W. Bush could have done something like this when he had majority votes in both houses of Congress.
But I feel like they didn't touch the issue because it would have cost them politically. I simply do not see McCain's stand on abortion being as strong as conservatives think it is. He changed his mind on the issue only a few years ago, in fact. I think it's a ploy to get votes. If McCain were strong on the issue, he would call it murder, saying abortion should be criminalized, and perhaps Cindy McCain would talk about the issue. Sarah Palin would talk about how abortion should be criminalized.
Instead, they throw the pro-life line at us and go on doing nothing. It should make conservatives furious, but it doesn't. It's like the argument has become a game about racking up rhetorical points, rather than saving lives. I see this as hypocritcal, and I support Obama's plan to make actual headway on this issue. The future may change this for me, but at this point, I see some hope on the horizon.
Religious leaders are very powerful, and Republicans cater to them and cannot win without the religious vote. That said, Republicans have pitched us two issues and reduced the Christian worldview to Gay Marriage and Abortion.
They had to do that because their economic policies are Biblically debatable. And occasionally there are battles won on the two fronts they've given the white church, but if you are asking if it was worth it to sell the church to the Republican Party, I would say no. Abortion is still legal, and many Democrats oppose gay marriage. So I don't see the use in staying in this impasse any longer.
Link
What is the plan for change that Obama suggested back then and do you see it coming to fruition today, two years later?
Why should we make abortion rare if it is not a human life? Why can't it just be viewed like pulling a tooth? That is not a human person, so who cares? The language of safe, legal, and rare doesn't compute. Why rare if it is not a human person? Why not just let people go for it?
Here is a quote from Scott Klusendorf that I found helpful in this regard:
"In the recent election we know that many Christians voted for Obama. Why do you think that more people don’t consider a candidate’s position on abortion to be a “trump card” issue when voting?"
SK: Simply put, they wrongly assume moral equivalency. For example, Just prior to the 2008 elections, a kindly nun at a Catholic high school pulled me aside to thank me for speaking to 400 of her students on the theme, “The Case for Life.” In fact, she couldn’t say enough good things about my talk. “I agree with everything you said. It was exactly what our kids needed to hear,” she beamed.
However, a moment later it was clear we didn’t agree when it came to applying pro-life principles. In fact, her moral reasoning was deeply troubling. She began our conversation by lamenting that her students were not pro-life on all issues. She then said, “I am consistently for life, and that’s why I’m voting for Senator Obama. Most people focus too much on abortion.” To which I replied, “What do you mean people focus too much on abortion?” She said that ending war is a pro-life issue like ending abortion, and at the moment, the war in Iraq was even worse than abortion. So I asked her, “To be worse than abortion, how bad would an unjust war have to be?” She replied that war, abortion, and poverty were all equally bad and Obama was right on most of those issues, so she was voting for him. “But are those issues bad in the same way?” I asked. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” I continued, “but doesn’t church teaching distinguish between moral absolutes and prudential judgments? In other words, the decision to wage war is not intrinsically evil, though it must be morally justified and prudently considered. But the deliberate killing of unborn human beings is an absolute evil and laws permitting it are scandalous. If I understand you correctly, you are willing to overlook Obama’s pledge to uphold an absolute evil because he might help us avoid a contingent one?” Her reply: “I just know war is worse right now.” I left her with this question: “To be worse than abortion, wouldn’t an unjust war have to kill more innocent people than abortion does each year? The war in Iraq has resulted in 100,000 deaths total (all sides) while abortion kills 1.2 million each year! In short, the evil of abortion is immeasurably worse, but she refused to see it.
http://takeyourvitaminz.blogspot.com/2009/03/case-for-life-interview-with-scott.html
Excellent post. I follow that blog on my reader and was scratching my head when I saw that. I agree, abortion is the trump card when it comes to politics. Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully help people think through this.
Robb,
Here is another link to Miller speaking on this issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIE5HwW3T_o&feature=player_embedded
Two comments on Miller’s comments:
1. If abortion is not wrong and should be a constitutional right, why should we reduce it? Either it’s wrong and should be outlawed, like stealing, rape, or let it have full rights. Saying we should “reduce abortions” doesn’t make many sense unless it is really, objectively wrong.
2. Saying it won’t ever go away has zero to do with the issue. Rape and stealing most likely will never go away, but don’t we all want laws against those crimes? We don’t say it’s “idealist” to legislate against these even though we know they are not going to go away until Jesus comes back to make all things right.
"Barack is offering progress"
- No, what Obama did was make clever overtures to evangelicals using finely hones language, and then did nothing different than any other Democrat does, which is continue to support abortion rights under and circumstances. He wanted your vote and he knew you wanted some justification to vote for him, so he told you something he knew you wanted hear. Once he had your vote, he did what NARAL wanted him to do.
Now that the election is looming, expect that he'll go to evangelicals and pro-lifers again with targeted language hoping to make you forget what he's actually DONE during his first term. Frankly, he does that because it works. And that's a sad indictment of evangelicals, pro-life folks and the voters in general.
hones should be honed
and should be any
we need an edit function for comments.
" I do wish we could end abortion completely, but the Republicans have not spelled out a realistic plan to do so, and until they do, I won't vote for a candidate who simply throws us a pro-life line and no plan."
- The author of this is quite disingenuous. The only way that abortion become illegal at this point is through the Supreme Court. In the Fall of 2008, the Supreme Court stood at 5-4 in favor of abortion rights. No one on either side of the debate was confused about what type of justices Obama would nominate if given the opportunity. In other words, not one person thought "well, Obama uses all this nice language about really wanting to reduce abortions, so perhaps he'll nominate a pro-life justice." No one buys that.
The stark reality is that Obama has already, in his first term, replaced two of those justices with other pro-choice justices. In so doing, he ensured that abortion stays legal for another generation.
Make no mistake about it. In the Fall of 2008 we were one vote on the Supreme Court from ending abortion. Anyone who acknowledges this fact, then says that they want to end abortion but voted for Obama is lying. Straight up lying.
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